Description
Book SynopsisThe study of Greco-Roman civilisation is as exciting and innovative today as it has ever been. This intriguing collection of essays by contemporary classicists reveals new discoveries, new interpretations and new ways of exploring the experiences of the ancient world.Through one and a half millennia of literature, politics, philosophy, law, religion and art, the classical world formed the origin of western culture and thought. This book emphasises the many ways in which it continues to engage with contemporary life. Offering a wide variety of authorial style, the chapters range in subject matter from contemporary poets'' exploitation of Greek and Latin authors, via newly discovered literary texts and art works, to modern arguments about ancient democracy and slavery, and close readings of the great poets and philosophers of antiquity. This engaging book reflects the current rejuvenation of classical studies and will fascinate anyone with an interest in western history.
Trade ReviewAnyone who questions whether there remains value in studying ancient Greeks and Romans need only consult almost any page of this volume to find a discipline that, far from dead, is kicking and scratching as it continues to grow. * The Historian *
Table of ContentsContemporary Poetry and Classics ; A Taste for the Classics ; New Texts and Old Theories ; The Use of Images: Visual History and Ancient History ; Ciceronian Correspondence: Making a Book out of Letters ; Discovery, Autopsy and Progress: Diocletian's Jigsaw Puzzles ; The 'Long' Late Antiquity: a Late Twentieth-Century Model ; Recolonising Egypt ; Greek History: a Discipline in Transformation ; Greek Civilisation and Slavery ; Socrates on Trial in the USA ; Roman History and the Ideological Vacuum ; Look Your Last on Lyric: Horace Odes iv.15 ; Another Look at Virgil's Ganymede ; ; Indifference Readings: Plato and the Stoa on Socratic Ethics ; Galen, Christians, Logic ; Rhetoric in Mid-Antiquity
